Nursing Alum proud of UWindsor contacts

Katie Moriarty (BScN 1985) is proud of the way that contacts she made studying nursing at the University of Windsor remain important to her work. A clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Nursing, she is one of the founders of a project to bring nursing students from Taiwan to see the Canadian and U.S. health care systems. A group of four third-year students from Taipei Medical University were on the UWindsor campus last week.

“How many universities could have three countries come together like this?” Moriarty said as the students toured training facilities in the Toldo Health Education Centre. She earned her doctorate at the University of Illinois, where one of her classmates was Lu-I Chang, now chief of the international education section at the Taipei College of Nursing. When the two discussed setting up an opportunity for Chang’s students to come to North America, Moriarty suggested Windsor as a stop. “I still have mentors here from the time I was an undergraduate,” she said. “I thought it might be a chance for these students to see how collaboration in school can continue throughout your life.”

Dr. Chang said the experience gave her students a chance to explore community-based health care. Besides the nursing school and Windsor Regional Hospital, the students visited the laboratory of human kinetics professor Kevin Milne, where they learned about his research into bio-behavioural issues. Among the community partners who welcomed the group were:

Building Blocks for Better Babies;

the Bulimia Anorexia Nervosa Association;

the Glengarry Community University Partnership;

Hospice of Windsor-Essex County;

Village of Aspen Lake – Schlegel Long Term Care Home.

Ya-Jyun (Nancy) Chen, one of the visitors, said those community organizations point up a difference between the profession here and in Taiwan. “In Canada, the nurses can care for the patient’s mental state, not just their physical needs,” she said. “At home, feeding the patients, getting them out—the family is expected to do those things.”